Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The
votes have been cast and the counts have been completed. Time for the
2017 edition of the Radio Achievement Awards, also known as The Waggies.

It’s
actually been a few years since I last awarded Waggies. And this is the
first year I actually counted votes; I was a bit surprised and pleased
that many of my choices were also yours. It seems great minds think
alike. If the selections were mine alone I will place an asterisk next
to the category, otherwise they are based upon your votes. So without
further ado:

*Worst Promoted Station: KABC
(790 AM). They have some good shows: Doug McIntyre in the morning, The
Drive Home in the afternoon (especially when Jillian Barberie is busy
with another project and John Phillips flies solo or with another
co-host. But you’d never know it ... KABC desperately needs some sort of
promotions push ... even some ads might help.

*Best Station Owner: Saul Levine.
The last of the independent owners in town, he still believes in radio
-- including AM radio, which most owners have left pasture. Go Country
(105.1 FM) is the number one country station in town, and he just
launched oldies on K-SURF (1260 AM) which has brought cheers from
classic car clubs for allowing drivers to hear something they like on
the original AM car radios.

Best FM Station: KSWD The Sound
(100.3 FM). Again, oldies seem to be a favorite format. Official The
Sound is Classic Rock, but many of the songs played were hits on top-40
stations first. What sets The Sound apart from other, similar stations?
Well, none are truly similar any more. KRTH (101.1 FM) has gone newer,
KLOS (95.5 FM) has gone rockier, and Jack-FM (KCBS-FM, 93.1) is just
annoying at times with songs that should never have been released in the
first place.

Best Alternative Rock Station: Alt 98.7.
Surprised? I was. I would have awarded it anyway but your votes -- and
station ratings -- backed me up. Alt has a buzz not seen since KROQ
(106.7 FM) of the 1980s.

Best News Station: KNX
(1070 AM). The second-place for best AM votes, winning best news isn’t
as impressive when it’s the last man standing. Regardless, KNX still
does all-news reasonably well considering the cost-cutting moves that
have lessened its prestige.

Best Talk Station: KFI
(640 AM). No surprise here ... KFI remains consistent snd entertaining;
I just wish they’d clean up the audio and bring back the HD signal.

Best Morning Talk Show: Doug McIntyre, KABC
(790 AM) weekdays. One reader nominated McIntyre for three different
categories: Best Morning Show, Best Ensemble, and Best Speaker. “The
only one I can trust,” wrote another.

Best AM Station: K-SURF
(1260 AM, 105.1 HD2). This one came from nowhere. And I’m not even sure
it even qualifies to win a Waggy because it wasn’t on the air last
year. but your votes were clear - you like oldies, and you don’t mind
hearing them on AM.

Best Mid-Day Show: Jonsey’s Jukebox, KLOS (95.5
FM). It’s only two hours a day (noon to 2 p.m., but it’s a treat. Steve
Jones plays what he wants when he wants, often highlighting music you
can’t hear elsewhere while talking with artists who are true to the art
form. The show also gives KLOS some real street cred, and have helped
put the station back on the map after years of neglect.

Best Weekend Show: Peace Love and Understanding, The Sound,
Sundays 8 - 11 a.m. Affectionately called “the hippy show” by some, the
program features Mimi Chen offering up songs from the late sixties and
more, ... putting you in a great mood for the day. My only problem: it
conflicts with the Jesus Christ Show on KFI, to which I give honorable
mention.

There
were many good choices sent in for many categories that didn’t make the
list, but I will do my best to promote them in future columns. A varied
list that includes such personalities as Tim Conway, Jr., Bryan Suits,
Larry Elder, Kevin and Bean, Gary Bryan, Ron Kilgore, Terri-Rae Elmer,
Ric Edelman (or is that Rice Delman?), Peter Tilden, and Johnny Magnus,
among others. In spite of the problems facing radio -- many self-imposed
-- we still have some great personalities and great stations in town.

Radio March 24, 2017

Last
week, Saul Levin’e Mt. Wilson Broadcasting launched a new oldies
station on KKGO’s digital stream (105.1 HD2), with a weekend simulcast
on sister station KBOQ (1260 AM), which had been playing standards.
Calling the oldies format K-Surf, the original plan was to try oldies
only on 1260‘s weekends to drive listeners to the HD signal as well as
to gauge listener acceptance of the new format.

Just one week later, the decision was made to run oldies full time on KBOQ. It appears that the listeners have spoken.

Levine
says that the response has been huge and tremendously positive. This is
not surprising; the oldies being played -- primarily music from the
1950s through the ‘60s -- have been essentially missing from the local
airwaves for years. So the decision became a no-brainer. Levine says he
is looking into hiring an air staff, and the call letters of 1260 were
officially changed to KSUR as of 6 a.m. Monday.

What
about the standards that 1260 had been playing up until last Friday?
They can still be found on 105.1 HD3, as well as online at unforgettable1260.com and via smartphone apps like TuneIn and StreamS Hi Fi Audio.

So
to recap: K-Surf is now oldies 24/7. Standards can still be heard on
KKGO 105.1 HD3. And K-Surf is simulcast on 105.1 HD3. What a great way
to attract listeners to HD streams, as well as to the AM band.

Readers React

Numerous emails arrived almost as soon as the weekend simulcast began on March 10.

“I
Remember dancing to 1260 AM music back in the 1950's Van Nuys High
School Sock Hop. Love this music the best times in my life.” -- Danielle
Gallardo

“I
was just lamenting the other day that the oldies which are played on
the radio today are not my oldies. I was beginning to think that I was
from the dinosaur era ... thank you for introducing me to true oldies.”
-- Sheena Caughey

Memories of KPOL

I
grew up listening to KPOL (now KMPC, 1540 AM). Not necessarily by
choice; it was the station my father listened to in the car and if he
was in the car, that was the station we heard. No, there was no other
choice.

KPOL
at the time I recall played Beautiful Music, a format that was popular
in the 1960s and early ‘70s, especially on FM, that featured string
versions of popular songs as well as light vocals. KPOL was also on FM,
simulcasting the music on 93.9, but due to the majority of radio
listening at the time being AM, KPOL distinguished itself not only by
playing the format on AM, it was also one of the few “pretty music”
stations at the time with real DJs. And it had very decent ratings as
well.

Until
recently, I’ve never heard any recordings of KPOL; I didn’t think any
existed. But through the magic of the internet, I found one. You can
find it too ... at http://tinyurl.com/1540KPOL.
It’s from August 7, 1964 and not exactly the format I remember, but a
good sample of easy listening music from long ago. And it does indeed
feature the harp interlude sound I remember so well from my days as a
passenger in our ’64 Impala wagon or our ’67 Camaro.

Final Tally

What
is your favorite station and why? Favorite shows? Personalities? I’m
working on the final tally of suggestions for the Radio Achievement
Awards -- aka The Waggies -- for 2017, to be announced next week in this
very space. Unless something else comes up, of course. Send your
suggestions to me now; your suggestions and nominations could make a
difference!

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

I
wouldn’t put it on the same level as when the fictional WKRP in
Cincinnati changed formats from Beautiful Music to top-40, but listeners
to many of Saul Levine’s smaller Los Angeles stations must have been
caught by surprise last week when most of them made some sort of switch.

First
off, Levine’s first musical love -- Classical -- moved down the dial
from the digital HD stream of 105.1 HD2 to 88.1 HD2. This puts classical
onto Long Beach State’s signal that Levine happens to run from his
Mount Wilson Broadcasting Company studios in Westwood.

You
need an HD Radio to pick up the digital signal and those mentioned
below; HD radios are widely available in many new cars and aftermarket
car stereos as well as home tuners and radios. Levine has long been a
supporter of the technology.

88.1
HD2 will feature classical music 24/7, while the main signal of 88.1 -
KKJZ -- will continue to feature jazz and blues programming. The
classical programming on 88.1 HD2 replaces a secondary jazz format the
station used to run; 88.1 HD3 will continue as K-Beach, run by students
on the campus of CSULB.

Now
that classical has moved down the dial, it frees up 105.1 HD2 to become
... OLDIES. Real oldies. As in focussing-on the-1950s-and-1960s oldies,
the songs long-ago abandoned by the major broadcast groups. Levine
calls it K-Surf, to invoke images of the Southern California beach
lifestyle and the songs that were once heard through transistor radios
plastered against your ear. As I write this, Bobby Vee’s Devil or Angel faded segued into To Sir With Love by Lulu followed by Pipeline by the Chantays.

It’s
only been on a few days -- the debut of the oldies format was last
Saturday -- but Levine says the response has been tremendous. So much so
that he’s thinking of putting the format full-time on KBOQ (1260 AM)
full time; for now KBOQ will continue to play standards during the week,
though it added oldies on the weekend ... leading to frantic calls and
emails from fans of the standards format.

All
of the stations can be found via apps such as TuneIn and StreamS HiFi.
It may even be on the iHeart app, but that has gotten so bloated I
cannot stand using it any more.

For
now the music is commercial and DJ free. I hope Levine adds DJs (and
jingles!), especially to K-Surf, even if they are voice-tracked to keep
costs down. Radio is a personal thing and DJs bring that connection, at
least in my opinion. I’d do a shift for free.

Now, you may be thinking ... didn’t Levine just change 1260 to standards? Why is he thinking of switching to oldies so soon?

Here
is where having independent broadcasters is so important. Yes, one
could quip that formats change on 1260 more often than some people
change underwear. I’ve joked about it myself, though the changes slowed
down in the past few years. But that misses the point.

Levine
could have sold out years ago and retired very comfortably. KKGO itself
is worth a small fortune, KBOQ is worth less but would still fetch a
decent amount ... and with the lack of commercials, one can easily
assume that KBOQ currently doesn’t make enough to pay the electric bill.
But Levine stays in radio because he loves radio, and he is constantly
finding formats that are in his opinion missing from the local airwaves.

He
did it -- and hit pay-dirt -- with country. He’s continued to support
classical and standards. And now he’s playing oldies that absolutely no
one else plays. I sincerely hope that the Levine Los Angeles radio
dynasty continues for many generations.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

For
the first time ever, an internet stream had enough listeners to take
the number one ratings spot in a key demographic, listeners aged 18-34.

This
happened in Nielsen’s January ratings report for the Tampa, Florida
area. “Maxima 92.5” WYUU’s internet stream finished first 18-34, ahead
of all broadcast stations in the area, including WYUU’s own on-air
signal. Quite a feat for a stream that, for at least the previous year,
didn’t register enough listeners to even make the ratings at all.

History in the making, right? Absolutely. But for all the wrong reasons.

Turns
out that, according to radio industry consultant Randy Kabrich who
studied the issue, the impressive ratings came from two -- count ‘em,
two -- people who probably received some sort of streaming device during
the holidays and left it on WYUU continuously. The likely Nielsen
Portable People Meter (PPM) holders are a Hispanic female aged 18-24 who
spent 32 hours per week listening to the stream, along with a Hispanic
male aged 25-34 listening 20 hours per week.

Let
that sink in for a while as I recall the various problems associated
with the PPM system: It doesn’t credit ratings well during spoken word
programming (news, talk, DJ banter); it doesn’t work in noisy
environments as when you’re in a car with windows down; it doesn’t work
with headphones; it over counts background listening as in offices and
stores; and there have been problems with data collection.

This
latest hitch -- one in which a station stream can be credited as the
top station via only two listeners -- proves beyond a shadow of a doubt
that Nielsen has nothing close to as many PPMs in the field as they need
to calculate accurate ratings, especially when the data is further
split into various subgroup demographics. Let me be clear -- the Nielsen
PPM holders (the two listeners in question) did nothing wrong, and I
have no doubt that they listened to the stream in question. But two
people can propel the stream to the top of the ratings? In a city of
over 2.5 million radio listeners? Really?

If
this is not proof that Nielsen’s PPM is so severely flawed as a ratings
system that its results can not be taken seriously, I don’t know what
is. Radio stations have no alternative but to use it, as it is the only
game in town. And some observers fault station owners for not wanting to
pay the required fees that would make expanding the number of PPM
holders a reality.

In my opinion, PPM is one of those things that looks great on paper,
only to be proven unreliable and obviously flawed and invalid. The
problem is what to do. Advertisers deserve to have a reliable
determination of station ratings; it would seem that the Federal Trade
Commission or Congress itself may need to get involved.

New Station in the IE

The
longtime simulcast on 93.5 FM of KDAY/Redondo Beach and KDEY/Ontario
has ended. KDAY will stay the course -- for now -- of playing classic
hip-hop, but KDEY is now Wild 93.5 with an urban hits format designed to
compete with KGGI (99.1 FM).

“Compete”
may be s strong word, as Wild has a very limited regional signal and
KGGI is a powerhouse that covers the entire Inland Empire and comes in
strong even where I live in Southern Los Angeles. But if they
super-serve the local community as the original license intended, it
could work. Local businesses need to advertise too, and a local station
is always a welcome addition to the radio landscape.

Now
the choice of format? Going against KGGI ... as well as the Los Angeles
stations that penetrate the market ... may not be the best move. As one
post to the KDAY Facebook page said, “Why make a station with modern
hip-pop music when we have Power 106, Real 92.3, and 99.1?? Good luck
staying relevant.”

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Cumulus
Media, owner of 447 radio stations nationwide including KABC (790 AM)
and KLOS (95.5 FM) locally, was dealt a huge blow last week in its
effort to reduce its debt. Reuters reports that a federal judge rejected
a plan that would have allowed the company to exchange a portion of its
$2.4 billion in debt with ... other debt.

The
plan involved exchanging “senior notes,” or loans that are soon due to
be paid back, for “a combination of stock and up to $305 million in
secured debt borrowed through a $200 million revolving credit line.”

I
would love those terms. If I could borrow $305 million from a $200
million line of credit, I could pay off the entire line of credit and
still have $105 million. Hmm...

The
real question, other than the financial sleight of hand that this
entire deal seems to be, is: can Cumulus use a line of credit to help it
pay down older debt at a discount? Major debt holder J.P. Morgan said
no, and the judge agreed. What happens next could decide the fate of
Cumulus Media as a company and the repercussions may be felt throughout
the industry, as iHeart, the largest radio company in the world, also
carries a huge debt load.

If
Cumulus is unable to refinance by March 13, a previously-reached
agreement with the majority of debtholders will expire; if that
agreement expires, it could trigger what is described as a “springing
maturity” of debt that could easily bankrupt the company.

Here
is what I don’t understand. I’ve done a few columns on the idea of
someone like me buying Cumulus outright. As I write this, Cumulus stock
sits at just under 76 cents per share, giving it a total market value of
just over $22 million. My plan would be to buy the company for what is
essentially less than the value of KLOS alone, sell off the majority of
the stations, and -- even if many of station sales were sold at
fire-sale prices -- be left with about $2 billion to run the remaining
ten stations I’d keep. Those ten stations would have no debt, meaning I
could put the remaining money into talent, programming and promotion.
With no debt and a huge cash stash to be used for running the remaining
group, my ten station network easily be the most profitable, dynamic
stations in the country.

Why
isn’t someone actually doing this? Or the related obvious question: why
isn’t anyone forcing Cumulus to do this themselves? What am I missing?
Shouldn’t a company that owes debt have to start selling stations to pay
off said debt? And will someone please explain this to the FCC and
Congress, both of which allowed this radio ownership model of “too big
to succeed” to happen in the first place? The best way to make radio
profitable again it to make it smaller, as consolidation has brought
down the entire industry.

A
cap of ten stations total nationwide would go a long way to bringing
back radio to the level of success it deserves. If new FCC chairman Ajit
Pai really wants to help radio -- as he claims he does -- this should
be the first move.

Woody Mornings

It
was KNX (1070 AM) that won the overall morning matings -- meaning all
listeners aged 6 and over -- but it was Alt 98.7 FM’s The Woody Show
that won the coveted and lucrative demographic of listeners 18-34.

If
you haven’t heard the show yet, you should check it out. Yes, parts of
it may be considered “light crude,” if there is such a phrase. Such as
when they play recordings of someone, um, passing gas with listeners
calling in to guess which of the morning crew passed it. But over all it
is a remarkably creative, clever, funny and witty show that is well
worth listening.

Stiffs and Hits

A funny thing happened as I was listening to recordings of The Real Don Steele on KHJ circa-1967 or so via ReelRadio.Com. Lots of stiffs. Thought not necessarily bad music. Let me explain.

I
was told once by Bill Drake, who along with Gene Chanault consulted KHJ
in the 1960s and KRTH (101.1 FM) in the 1990s, that KRTH could easily
play tapes of KHJ and few would notice ... it was the same music.

Yet
as I listened to recordings of Steele, I found just the opposite. Many
of the songs were not hits, even when new. KHJ, and most hit stations of
the era, tried to break as many new songs and new bands as they could.
It was a bragging right as well as a survival technique, as many songs
were shorter than three minutes and would quickly burn out if new music
didn’t come in soon to replace it.

So
unlike today, when a song can stay on station playlists for years, in
the 1960s and ‘70s the entire playlist could be totally different in a
matter of weeks. Thus, even “hitbounds” didn’t necessarily become hits
at all. And old recordings such as on ReelRadio offer music that you
truly may have never heard in decades, if you ever heard it at all. I’m
not saying this is good or bad, but it is a difference between radio then and now.